This episode of the Digitally Diverse podcast features a conversation with Rebecca Preston, a Senior Product Designer at Zipline. Rebecca discusses her career journey, the importance of user research and design collaboration, and the challenges and rewards of working in a remote-first environment. She also offers valuable advice for aspiring designers and emphasizes the power of networking, self-improvement, and the willingness to pivot and adapt in the ever-changing tech industry.

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Welcome to another episode of Digitally Diverse, where we do a deep dive into the lives and careers of the movies and shakers in the australian design industry. Today we are joined by the wonderful Rebecca Preston, who is a senior product designer at Zipline. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course. Thank you for having me. For the people who don’t know you, you haven’t been in Australia for a little while, so. Yeah, I’m sure that. But it’d be great to hear a little bit more about your journey. And can you give us a brief overview? Yeah, for sure. So, first of all, I’m not australian. You’re gonna hear that straight away. I’ve lived in several different places, but I started my career in London. I went to an arts university, which I can talk about a little bit later, and did my degree. And then I have been a junior graphic designer, moving into an intermediate level. Then I went into an interactive design role and I kind of fell into tech. I think there’s a question that you was like, how did you get into tech? It was an accident. So talk about that in a bit. So many people have a similar story where it’s like, oh, like, I didn’t pick it, it picked me. Exactly. Yeah, totally. And then, yeah, I ended up getting into user experience design and I’ve worked for some really wonderful companies and I lived in Canada for ten years. I’ve just moved here. It’s a great place. Shout out Canada. And I’ve literally been here for three months. So I’m very, very excited to be here. So exciting. Love that. And can you tell us a little bit more about what you like, what you’re up to here and focusing on that? I can. So I work for a company called Zipline. It’s a retail tech company. Our product is obviously software, but we help bridge the gap between the headquarters of a retail company and their franchises and the stores below them. So it’s really a communication stopgap to help execute on all of the tasks and everything else that happens within a retail corporation. We’re very, very lucky that we are very loved by our customers. We have very high ratings with them, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join them. It’s not often that you get that. Sometimes you’re like, oh, no. Oh, it’s low. We need to bring it up. So, yeah, I am a senior product designer there in one of the engineering teams. And it’s pretty small. It’s like, I think it’s under 200 for sure. But it’s a nice size. Yeah. Amazing. I have actually used zipline in the past when I was working in retail back in the day when I was in Canada at Lily Lemon. They are, I’m sure, one of your biggest customers. Yeah. Super exciting to be talking to someone kind of behind the scenes and how it all works. What does the day to day look like for you? Usually? I should also mention that this company is like a global organization. I’m very lucky I got to join it. We have four designers right now, including myself. One is in Mexico City. Amazing. One is in Vancouver, Canada. The other’s in Seattle, USA. And obviously, I’m here. So day to day is really communicating with my counterparts within the design organization. But mostly it’s me talking to my product manager on my engineering team, my engineers, making sure things are feasible. We also use the shape up methodology at Zipline. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. It’s a basecamp kind of base methodology. You can read up about that online. Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. So it’s really just working through the quarters, looking at what’s ahead, if anything needs research, if we don’t know any information, I also help the team with user research. We plan out what we need to know and then executing actually within the projects themselves. Doing feasibility design rounds. Yeah. Thinking about metrics, what we want to track, all that good stuff. It seems like that would probably be almost like a. Like a project management kind of framework, as well as, like, just keeping everyone on track. I feel like that’s actually one of the most overlooked things with product design positions. And again, I think different companies see product design in a different way. Some of them will be. They’ll say a senior product designer is just like a very high level senior UI designer. A lot of them. It is cross functional, though. And I do think a lot of my roles have included, including this one, the project management, the operational piece, going to stakeholders within the company, even things like user research education as well. Yeah. Especially with such a small design team as well. You’d all have to be pretty on top of things. There wouldn’t be a specific ops person to keep you on track. So that sounds like it would take up a lot of your day to day time as well. That must be a bit of a weird thing to be not only in a new place, but also be really, really fresh in the job as well. Yeah. How have you found handling all of that? Good. Yeah. I think I’m very proactive. I’ve always been very proactive and ambitious. So my main thing is how can I help the team? How can I help grow the team? I also find with a lot of organizations, when you join, it depends. Sometimes you’re really lucky and the core of the company is very design thinking based. Often no. So sometimes it’s, again, educating people about, hey, this is the design system. This is how it can be, like weaved within the product development cycle and helping people with that as well. Super interesting. I want to dive in a little bit more into that later, I guess. What’s the culture like and how does everyone work together, especially because you’re so dispersed? I used to work for this company called Unbounce and it’s a big marketing tech company. I worked there for over five years and I worked with amazing, very smart, very kind people. And their culture was very people first. When I was going to move here, my friend Kieran shout out to Kieran, engineering lead, he was saying, hey, we actually have a design role for you. And I said, oh, I’m actually moving to Australia. And he goes, oh, that doesn’t matter. The last designer was in Australia as well. Perfect. So I knew just from the fact that several people I worked at that previous company were there. The head of HR was from the previous company. I was very confident in what the culture would be like. It’s very people first. It’s very remote first. We have no physical office anywhere in the world. Right. Yeah. Even the founder does not have, like, there’s no place that they would say there’s like a big headquarters. Yeah. So it’s extremely dispersed. So one thing that I know is a big focus on the company is communication. I’ve had to get really good at making loom videos. Very short, which is hard. I’m doing design walkthroughs. I have to really, like, skim it down. It’s like, what do I need to say? I can’t send a slack message, which is just like a wall of information. So communication really is key, especially being in a time zone where I’m one day ahead of them as well. Yeah, right. That would be. Yeah, that would add like a whole different kind of flavor to all of the things that you’re doing. And especially because it is almost like a team comms tool that you’re working for, you would expect all of that to be pretty on point. Yeah, yeah. That’s great that you were able to, you know, have a bit of an idea of what you were walking into because you already knew a lot of the team. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What’s on the roadmap for the next, like six to twelve months with you joining the design team. So because we’re also dispersed, we do get together once a week and we talk about the things that we want to start, you know, executing on for the company. One thing we really want to start focusing on as a design team, we’ve just ramped up all of our hiring, including myself. So we now have a full design team. Again, one thing we really want to look at is making sure that when we are building out products and features with our engineering counterparts and PM counterparts is we’re really looking at that research piece. We’re really making sure we’re making not just educated guesses, but we’re kind of, we’re looking at things like, hey, is this really usable? Is this like a concept that people will go for? So just making more of that analytical piece and having that design centered thinking piece throughout the company as well. So that’s really what we’re focusing on. Yeah. So, like more decisions made on data and how to really back that up. Exactly. And we also are hiring for, we have a contract designer coming in to work on our design systems piece because obviously, being a smaller team, we don’t have a lot of time to start building out more pieces of our component library. So we’ll have some stuff that’s in the front end library. But when we’re building out things be like, we’re missing that button, we don’t have it in there and just categorizing everything. So. Yeah, and that’s sometimes something that you don’t necessarily want a dedicated, permanent person to be on top of. It’s a perfect thing to get someone also a little bit out of the team and a little bit out of that bubble to really look hardcore into. Okay. You have to do a proper audit of everything and like, really pick it apart. Cause someone has to do it. And some people also love it. I’ve met people in my career that they’re like, I love design systems and I’m like, okay, good for you. I also, I like it, but I don’t want to do that full time. There’s other things that I enjoy more. So I think it’s good to have someone dedicated. Like, they’re in that frame of mind. They are very analytical in the way that they think and the way they execute. And they can really help the design team be able to build things quicker rather than doing everything from scratch. Yeah, definitely. And what kind of research do you folks typically utilize? Is it more like quantitative or what do you usually get involved with. Yeah, it’s a bit of both. So we’re trying to build out a new framework. Now. I know historically they’ve been focusing more on, like, qualitative customer interviews. I know they’ve also done quantitative surveys and things like that that get sent out to people. What we’re trying to do now is implement more of from beginning to end. So having a framework throughout the process. For example, if we have an idea of what may solve a problem from the start, then we’ll sit down with customers and we’ll run them through a couple of concepts. We’ll ask them to rate the value. Also doing external and internal usability testing, just to make sure. I think another thing is just giving the engineers time to test the feasibility of things as well so we don’t get further down the road. And they’re like, we can’t actually build this in six weeks. Now this is becoming four months and you need to, like, not. Yeah, we need to put this on the back burner. Exactly. Yeah. I used to recruit purely for UX researchers. It’s something that I’m like, really, really passionate about. So it’s really cool to see that, you know, that’s a priority for you guys, especially when you’re designing for a very specific market as well. It’s like maybe someone’s best guess may be completely off base. It could be. Especially if you’ve never worked in retail before and different companies do things so many different ways. Exactly, yeah. And I think even if you have worked in an industry, let’s say I am a designer. I’ve been a designer for over twelve years now. But for me to say I know exactly what it’s like to be a junior designer now, I don’t. I know what it was like twelve years ago when I was a junior is also conducting research. Takes the bias out of your ideas as well. And we get so attached to them. Right. Like, everybody is like, my ego is attached to this. Yeah. But sometimes it’s good just a test to be like, people don’t actually. They don’t want that. Yeah. And so you can go, oh, okay, cool. We’ll just do something else. So you mentioned that you’ve been in design for over twelve years now. Was there anything in particular that compelled you to start in the industry? This is probably what every designer says. Like, when I was young, I did lots of coloring in and I was really artistic, but I always really loved art. I always really loved design. I was always really good at those kind of subjects. In school. And so when I looked at going towards a career path, it was really like, do I want to go into more fine art, or do I want to go into something more commercial? I always loved those kind of things. So when I was choosing a degree, that’s really the avenue I chose to go down. Yeah, that’s really what led me into design. I started off in advertising. I was like, I’m going to be in advertising. I’m going to be a creative director, and I’m gonna stay in London. It’s always so glamorized as well. Like, I just think back to all of, like, the films from, like, the early noughties, and, like, everyone was wanting to be, like, an editor at a magazine or, like, you know, very print based. It was all very, like, fancy where, yeah, once you get in there, it may or may not be different. Not for me. Advertising is like a very, I don’t know, specific beast. I think, like, you’re either built for it or you’re nothing. And for me, I got into it. I was like, okay, this is not what I want to do. So then I pivoted. But, yeah, yeah, you can tick that off your list. Yeah, I did it. Yeah. So what was your. What were you like, working in London? Like, fast paced agency. So I did a lot of internships in London. Actually, when I graduated from university, I ended up after doing these internships, I went to Sydney, and I went to. It was like an interdisciplinary. I guess it was kind of like an advertising agency, to be honest. So, like, our clients were, like, wineries and nightclubs and, like, all these random things and boutiques and things like that. Really learned how to use the pen tool in Photoshop. That was, like, my big breakthrough. I remember being like, why didn’t I learn this in university? That’s how I got into it. And then I ended up going back to London, worked there for a little bit, and then I moved again. I went to Canada. It’s been a very meandery kind of career path for me. What was the leap from agency land into more of the UX design, more technology focused design work that you do now? So when I first moved to Canada ten years ago, I was still in an advertising agency there. I was like, okay, I’ll continue doing this. I was a contractor working for them. I just began to really realize it wasn’t for me. I liked the print aspect. I loved having big budget projects. You know, you could do, like, silver foil and stuff. Like, everyone loves that. Love a bit of foiling. Yeah. And then when I was applying for, for a job, I was like, okay, maybe I want to go into the more interactive piece of it. Maybe I want to do more. Like, I can still do ads, but they can be online ads and I can do online campaigns. So that’s really where I got into that. And I applied for a job in financial technology, not thinking anything of it, and I got it. And that’s really where I pivoted more into the interaction piece. And then I was really lucky at that company. A couple years later, they had a UX design team and an interactive design team as well. And there was a slot that opened up and I was like, oh, I think that would be really cool just from working and collaborating with that team. I also at this point was like, okay, graphic design is not for me, but I love psychology. So I was also like, maybe I’ll do, like a psychology masters and I’ll go into, like, being a therapist or something like that, because I just love the way people, people think. But it wasn’t quite fitting me because I still like, I still like that creative piece. I still like making things. So that’s what I really found in user experience design for me. It’s like the psychology and the design mixed together and I was like, oh, my God, this just clicks. Yeah. And, yeah, I’ve been in it kind of ever since. I love that. And, yeah, it’s something that comes up quite a bit when I have these conversations with people is that they love design. They were very arty kid, and they just kind of fell into it naturally, but then realized, okay, after a while, I love making pretty things, but what are they actually doing? Like, how are they impacting people? So super interesting that you kind of had come into it with that lens of, I want to know how people think and I want to see how they interact with these products or these campaigns. Yeah, exactly. And I think another piece of it is like, what really what I love about the job is, like, the why behind it. Just getting a project and being like, just do it. Which is sometimes that’s what happens in a campaign. You’re just executing upon something. I really struggled with that. I was like, but why do people want this? And then not measuring the outcome as well and being like, did people like this billboard? Did they use this website? Are we tracking this? Yeah. Like, what is the measure of success here? Exactly. Yeah. So I like, I really like that piece about user experience design as well. Yeah, you can track it almost too much, but you can sometimes it’s too much? Yeah, for sure, I guess. Kind of already touched on this, but is that one of the main reasons that, you know, really motivates you to keep going within this line of work, or is there any other motivators or things that really light you up? You know what I love about this job? I get to work with so many different stakeholders across companies. I love people, and I love helping people, and I love, like, unblocking people. And I think also being that part, like, having a partnership with people. So, like, I love my product managers, every product manager I’ve ever had, I’m just like, okay, let’s be besties. Yeah, like, let’s. I need to know how you think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think it’s about building that trust and that rapport between all teams and really leaning into that vulnerability of being a team and like, okay, guys, we’re together. Let’s just make sure we execute upon this and do the best. That’s the connection piece. Yeah. Especially when, like, with interactive design and anything, obviously human centered design. This all, you know, there’s the latest buzzword, whatever it may be. It is all about just getting to the heart of the problem. And you do need to talk to people to do that. Exactly. Yeah. And you can. You can execute until, you know. But what are you executing and why? That’s when you’re gonna get to the good stuff. Exactly. Yeah. Sounds like that’s what. That’s what lights you up. Yeah, I also love talking to customers, too. I’m just like, yeah, that also helps. Yeah, exactly. Just realize my career. When I’m talking through my career, sometimes I forget things. Cause I’m like, I went here and I went here. I know for other people, it’s more linear and they have a more defined path, whereas mine’s like, I went here and then I went here because I knew this person. So, yeah, you can seem a bit like ping pongy, but honestly, I totally empathize with that because I am pretty much the same. Yeah, I feel like you and I are very similar in the way that we started one place. We’re in London for a little bit, went to Canada for a little bit. Now we’re home, and now we’re other places, so. Yeah, no, I totally get that. But we’ll start from kind of the beginning. Tell us a little bit more about your tertiary education. Like, what degree did you do and what would you study? Yeah, so I went to University of the arts, London. I know it sounds very, very fancy, and I really, like, wanted to make sure I got what was seen as a very good degree, because I was like, if I’m gonna do this, I want to do this to the best of my ability. I think the formal name for this degree was like, ba, honors in graphic and media design for advertising. It was very long, very specific, very, very specific. And then before that, I also, at the same university, did a foundation course. And then that’s where you choose what you’re going to specialize in for your degree. So you can then go into architecture, fine art, graphic design, whatever you want to from that. So, yeah, that was how I kind of got into it. When you were at school, was that like, you knew that that was the exact degree that you wanted to get into, or did you kind of just wait and see what would happen, what you got accepted into? It was different in the UK because the UK is based. It’s probably the same here, to be honest. It’s based upon points as a points based system, but a lot of arts based universities, you won’t have to. It’s based upon your portfolio. So you’ll go and they’ll be like, okay, we feel like you have the skills necessary for this degree and we’ll take you whether you fail school or not. Okay. So, yeah, I got accepted into a few of them. I also got accepted. I was going to go to Brisbane at one point. I was going to go to Griffiths. Nice. I’ll go there if I don’t get into the London university. And I got into the London, so I ended up. Yeah, the Lord made up your mind for you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I always like to ask people, when you graduated, you obviously had a focus on getting into advertising. Is that kind of where you saw your career going, like indefinitely, or did you think, okay, this is a good place to start, and then I’ll see what happens? Oh, no. I full on thought I was going to be like, in this linear pathway, I was like, I’m going to be a junior, then an intermediate, then a senior, then a creative director. And that’s just like, where I was going to be based upon the degree that I did. Very linear pathway. What kind of agencies did you work at when you were over there? So I mostly just worked in a couple. There was the one that was in Canada where it was like, it’s a worldwide one and they had a franchise or a branch in Vancouver, so we worked with, like, a lot of hotels doing all the campaigns for that. And then it was smaller kind of design agencies, which still did advertising. So I never worked at, like, a giant behemoth advertising agency. Yeah. But, yes, I had friends who did. Yeah. There were very long hours there. Yes, I know. It’s a work hard, play hard culture. Exactly. As you mentioned before, like, some people are just built for it. Yeah. Some people love it. Yeah. And they thrive off it and they just love the fast pace and, yeah, they’re a different breed for anyone who loves being in agency. I take my hat off to them because I could not do what they do. They are incredible and very, very smart people, but it’s not for everyone. No, it is not. Yeah. When it came to, you know, potentially, you know, making the decision to move, was there any catalyst for that, or were you just ready for something new? When I moved from Canada to here, yeah, I met an australian guy. I feel like this is, like, the typical thing. Yeah, I met my. My fiance now when I was over there. Congratulations. Thank you. He lived in Whistler, and I lived in a town called Squamish. I was actually thinking at that point, I’d been in Canada for a long time, and I was like, I feel like I’ve done all the things and it wasn’t. It didn’t feel like home forever for me, even though I have lots of my best friends there. And, yeah, he was thinking about moving home, and then we went here to see his family. I used to live here, obviously, many years ago. It’s like, oh, I actually, I could. I could live here again. Yeah. And then we’re having silent conversations in our heads without talking to each other, and then we’re like, oh, should we just move? Yeah. It was very. It was very organic. It was very, like, it’s time for a change. He wanted to go home. We’re now closer to his family, which is really great. And all of his friends are from here, too. I love that they all went to the university in Newcastle. So, yeah, there’s something to be said. I’ve fallen victim to this as well. I grew up here, could not wait to leave, left, had my fun, lived overseas for a number of years, and then all of a sudden, it’s like a switch flips in your head. I don’t know if it happened to him as well, where it’s like, okay, Newcastle’s home. Like, I’m ready to come back now. Like, it’s got all the best things about, like, being close to Sydney, but none of the traffic. It’s like. But not being in Sydney. Yeah, exactly. Anytime. Like, obviously they have beautiful lakes and things like that. I remember anytime we would go to the beach, my partner would go, this is not beach. I’d be like, it is. He’s like, no, it’s not. It’s just a different time. It’s a different type. The beaches here are nice. Yes, I know. Although I definitely had that thought when we would have a couple of weekends down in Brighton. I was like, there’s pebbles. This isn’t a beach. England doesn’t have the best beaches. They look good, but there’s a lot of rocks. Yes. You know, you gotta be careful not to slip over. Yeah, it’s not a good time. You’ve kind of arrived in Australia at like, one of the worst times. It’s like early winter. Yeah, you’ve got all. You’ve got another probably five months ish to go before it gets proper nice again. We’ve obviously just done our winter there, and we got some skiing in, which was great. Went up to whistler a couple of times. Fantastic. With friends and, yeah, I was like, oh, okay, I’m ready for summer. And then we had, I think, two weeks that were really beautiful. We’re up near south west rocks where my in laws are, and then, yeah, now we’re in winter. It’s very weird for me. I’m like a summer baby. I’m born in the summer and now I’m born in the winter, so that’s very weird for me. But, yeah, when the summer comes, it’s going to be really great. Yeah, no, it’s going to be so much fun. Oh, yeah, it’s coming. So, obviously, you started more in agency land, and that’s what your education was kind of based around. And then now you’ve moved into tech. Is there any advice that you would give to people perhaps wanting to pivot or, you know, move straight into that space? I would say, number one, I don’t think you need an art degree, because in all the teams I’ve been in, I think there’s been one other person with an art degree or a design based degree. There are a lot of really great courses that you don’t need to do a full degree. There are things like boot camps, I will say with boot camps. I’ve also taught some at a place called brainstation. They’re great in Canada. They work across Canada with young adults. They’re a great place to start. But I think, honestly, okay, you got to have some formal training of some kind. You cannot just jump into it. You obviously need a portfolio. Networking is your biggest friend. Like, people are really, really important. Some of the best jobs I’ve got is through knowing people. And some of the first jobs I ever got when I was a junior, I’d just be like, I’ll take you out for coffee. I’ll take you for a free coffee. I don’t expect a job. I just want to pick your brain. Yeah. And asking, like, other designers who are at a higher stage above you or who are, who have broken in, reach out to them on LinkedIn. I love it when young designers talk to me on LinkedIn. I’m also. So I’m here for it. I’m like, I’ll tell you my weird meandering story. And also, if you’re in a company that has a user experience or other type of design team, ask. I found in my career just asking the questions, asking for opportunities. If I had never asked to move teams, I would not be sitting here in the career that I’m in today, like, very, very fulfilled. So just ask people, do some formal training of some kind. You do not need to do a design degree. It’s also incredibly expensive to sign. Degree? Yes, ma’am. No, I 100% agree with the networking aspect. You don’t have to door knock on people’s offices or anything. No, please don’t do that. Yes, do not do that. But it’s just more like putting yourself out there. I’m an extrovert. Introvert. I know how uncomfortable and icky it feels to introduce yourself to potentially a stranger and be like, hi, I admire you and your work. Can I take you out for coffee? Can we do, like, a virtual zoom call and, you know, talk about what you. What you’ve done? One of the main things that I found as well, like, it is my job to talk to other people about their jobs, is actually how open, senior and lead people are in having those conversations. They love it. Really. It can stroke their ego. Like, people. People do, like, being approached and being. And talking about themselves. So, yeah, just give it a go. Yeah. We also remember it was hard. Like, don’t get me wrong, I graduated. I was like, how am I? What is happening? How did I land here? Yeah, where do I go? Who do I talk to? So just having, like, a friendly ear to be like, okay, don’t worry. Like, it’ll happen. You just have to. You’ve got some steps ahead of you. But be also be very persistent. I just remember when I moved to Canada and I was, like, having networking calls. I had people say some really weird stuff to me. One guy was like, oh, you remind me of me when I was younger, like, good luck getting a job because, like, I don’t even know what he said, but people are going to say things to you or they’re going to try and steer you in different directions. And I think you just have to be really true to yourself and be like, no, I have worth, I know I can get this. Sometimes people are going to look at your portfolio and very rightly be like, that really sucks. You’re missing things from that. But just take it in and take the advice and be humble about it. Yeah. And I think that’s the only way that you can grow, especially when you’re just starting out. There’s lots of, I get probably half a dozen messages a week from juniors being like, can you please look at my portfolio? It is also a big part of my job is to look at people’s folios all day and some are really great and some not so much. Then that’s my job, to then provide feedback and be like, you know, I’d take this out. I’d add this. Exactly. It’s all about, you know, putting yourself out there and just seeing what happens. Yeah, you kind of got to leave it up to the universe sometimes. Also, just make sure if you’re applying for a job, like really read it. Don’t just send them a blank. People can tell, like, when I have to do hiring for companies, and I’ve been in teams where, like, you didn’t even edit that there are typos, you put a project in there which doesn’t relate to the job that we need you to do. So just like, make sure you really look at that stuff, because people do look at it. Oh, yeah, there’s some people you can tell straight away, like, okay, you definitely put thought into this. Contrary to popular belief, it actually doesn’t take too long to fix up a few things and use spell check. People use spell check. Please, please, I beg you. Yeah, I agree. Whenever I see that, I’m like, mmmdh. I mean, I probably, I misspell things in day to day, but, you know, just when you’re applying, check it. It is kind of important. Yes. About the bootcamps, though. So I ran two or three as a teacher and I really loved that. Like, that was great. The problem with bootcamps is they’re marketed to people, as in, like, okay, you can just start right away. And I think here’s when you can probably start right away and pivot. It’s if you’re already a designer or you’re already an engineer, but you work with designers, I had a few of those people. They do kind of hybrid jobs and they want to learn or understand more about the different role. So they’re trying to be more empathetic towards the designer that they’re working with. They’re trying to be more collaborative or they’re already a designer and they did what I did, where they switched. If you are just coming into a boot camp cold and you have worked in, I know you’re a bank teller, for example, you could be, or, I don’t know, a farmer. Yeah. Something completely out of, like, left field. Yeah. You were going to find it really hard to find a job off the mark because you are going to need to do. I mean, maybe you could get an internship, but you’re still going to need that portfolio, and a bootcamp will give you a couple of things to put in there. But really, I think you’re going to have to do a lot more work than other people to be able to pivot into it. As a recruiter, I can tell a lot of times where someone is fresh. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Kudos to you for putting yourself out there, but you can really tell sometimes when someone’s super duper freshen, all of the bootcamp portfolios kind of look very similar. So I think, yeah, that’s also something really important to mention as well, is that there’s a bit of a turnover. Yes, there is. Do with that information what you will, everyone. You’ve moved around, you’ve been in lots of different industries. Has there been any speed bumps or big challenges that have kind of made you question what the heck you’re doing? Well, actually, I think in general, it’s happening across the tech industry. We’ve seen a much higher turnover and layoffs. Let’s just talk about layoffs for a second. Layoffs really suck. I’ve been laid off twice. It really sucks. It really knocks the confidence out of you. But I would say to people, like, it’s never personal. It’s often that perhaps there are too many people on a project. It’s often perhaps that the forecast for the company, it didn’t work out in the way that they had to. And then you were literally, they’re like, this is how much this person gets paid. They’re often not looking at your name and then you’re cut. I think that’s something that I have found hard and in the past have taken very personally. But now I see that it is not personal and I know it is happening across the board. It’s also a lot harder for people to get into jobs. There’s a lot more people competing for the same role. There’s a lot more people applying, especially in North America. There’s people that have worked at Apple and Google, those large, large companies coming in. So that can really put people off. But I think then it’s about perseverance. So, yeah, layoff’s definitely a speed bump. I mean, even changing companies or changing roles, it knocks your confidence a bit because you’re like, okay, now I have to start again. How do I do this? But I think that’s where you have to really lean into that knowledge of, like, okay, I’ve done this before, I can do this again. Like, change is okay. Asking other people for help, things like that. Yeah. Really relying on your network especially. It’s just been like the wild west out there lately with layoffs. I feel like here wasn’t as bad as what Europe was or North America, because we do have the presence of some of those big tech companies, but the vast majority of the australian tech scene is a bit isolated. Yeah, yeah. We had a little bit of blowback, but not too much to the extent of whoever else was. But with that being said, there has definitely been some people affected. It’s just kind of wild to see some really incredible designers and just people working in tech, you know, of their work. They’re really active within the community all of a sudden to realize, oh, my gosh, like, they. They got laid off. If it can happen to them, it can literally happen to anybody. So don’t. Yeah. If you are impacted by it, like you said, it’s. You can’t take it personally. No, because it’s. It honestly has nothing to do with their skill or their loyalty to their company or anything like that. It’s just. It’s just a bit shit at the moment. Yeah, it just happens, and it’ll happen to a lot of people, I’m sure, throughout their careers. But it’s. It’s not. Don’t give up. Like, you still go. You end up in an amazing place. It’s not permanent. It’s not the end of the world. And I know that so many people who have gotten let go, it’s a bit of a kick up the butt to start their own thing, or for them to, you know, just say, well, fine, you know, I got the boot from some, like, big, big company. I’m gonna start a startup or I’m gonna join a scale up. And they just are kicking so many goals, like 1218 months later now, which is really exciting to see. So there is some, like, long term good that can come out of, you know, a really crappy time initially. Yeah. I always like to think, like, any the two times it’s happened to me, it allowed me to focus on what I really wanted, and it allowed me to go to a different industry. When it happened to me, I was like, oh, I actually really want to work in mental health tech. That’s, like, very. I’m very passionate about things like mental health. And so I got to work in a startup, and I got to help them with that, and I felt like I was doing something really enriching for my soul and for the company. So every time it’s happened to me, it’s been such a blessing. And I just think wherever you’re meant to end up, like, that’s just gonna push you towards it. Like you said, sometimes you’re gonna do your own thing. Maybe you want to start freelancing. You’re like, I love freelancing. I don’t ever want to work for a corporate company again. Yeah. So, yeah, I think there’s good stuff that comes out of it 100%, and it allows you. It sounds like that happened to you as well. It gives you a bit of time to reflect and actually think about what you want to do next. Exactly. Yeah. It gives you a second to be like, okay, okay. Did I actually like working there? I think I did, but maybe I like these things more about working here and these things less, and I want to go in this direction. A bit of space to think about them. Exactly. So on that note, on the fact that you’re really passionate about, you know, mental health, is there anything that you do that, you know, really fit for you to take care of yourself and keep your productivity up? Yeah, that’s a really good question. I wish more people asked this question. So I work fully remote. This is my first job where it’s been, like, I’ve worked remote before, but I’ve always had, like, a hub, like, in Vancouver or something like that. Yeah, I think we’re about to hire someone else in Australia, but otherwise, I’m the only person who works in Australia for the company. Right. So I think one of those things that, like, keeps me happy and healthy is I have hours of overlap with my team, so it’s actually perfect for me because I have my meetings in the morning. Love it. And then I have lunch, and then I’m like, okay, now I get focus time. Who gets that much focus time? You don’t really usually. That is unheard of. No. My boss is, like, very jealous. So one of the things I like to do is that when I’m done for the day, I shut my laptop. I don’t open it because I think when you work remotely, it’s so easy to be like, I’m just going to do a little bit more. I’m going to push my hours, and I think that leads you to burnout. Just making sure. When I’m done, I shut my laptop, I take my dog outside. I go outside immediately, make sure that I run three times a week. I make sure that I’m in team sports. I make sure that I go for a coffee at the weekend with people. I go to networking events. Especially when you’re a more extroverted person. I think something that keeps you productive and happy is having those social moments outside of work. Also just regular time blocks in your calendar. It’s like a life hack. Just build in 15 minutes for a break, walk around the office if you’re in an office, things like that. And then just tell other people, if you’re having a day where you’re like, I’m having a bit of a day, my brain’s not working so well. Just talk to other people about it and you’ll be surprised. Like, you can. Especially as a designer. Sometimes you need to bounce ideas off other people that helps your productivity, rather than you sitting there being like, oh, my God, I don’t know. I’ve been staring at the screen at figma for 2 hours. I don’t know. Just ask someone. Stewing on things is for some people, how they, like, really churn out good ideas. But then for other people, it’s the complete opposite. So, yeah, knowing what works best for your brain. Exactly. Everyone’s different. Introverts very different. Like, you need more alone time to recharge. I get it. I can be quite introverted. And knowing what fills my cup would also be completely different to an extra pet like yourself or, you know. So figuring out what those things are and staying true to them because it’s so easy to be like, I need to do yoga three times a week when actually running three times a week might actually be way better for your brain. Yeah. If you’re interested, I have friends who are more introverted, and when they’re done work, like, they may as well go for a walk. But then they’re like, I’m gonna read a book, or I’m gonna watch a movie, or I’m gonna turn off my phone so that nobody can contact me for 2 hours. Yeah, do not disturb. Yeah, that’s totally fine as well. But yeah, you’re right. Just knowing what lights you up and makes you feel better so that you can come back to work on a Monday and be like, okay, I’m ready to go. Yeah, my cup is full again. Let’s tackle whatever we’ve got on. Yeah. Is there any content that you consume regularly? Like, do you follow any podcasts or books or anything like that? I feel like I get this question sometimes and I feel like people expect me to be like, yes, this designer. And I’m like, no, no. I like, there’s a really good australian podcast, I think it’s called. I’ll have to find it for you. Okay. It will pop it in the notes. There’s one out there. It’s two australian girls. And they basically just chat about life and all the things that, like the funny scenarios you get into. I like listening to that when I worked. Also, I like true crime podcasts. Yes. So good. Some people like, that’s messed up, but I like it. I think for me, it’s like, it provides me a sense of justice when there’s a end to something awful. I’m like, yep, I totally, totally agree. Have you heard the one, my favourite? Murder? Yes. It’s so funny. So morbid, but so funny. But it’s. It’s very funny. So highly recommend that one. Also, I’ve read quite a few books and articles upon servant leadership. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re a leader and you want to help lead in a team, it was, I’m going to tell you what to do, you’re going to execute upon it, and if you don’t, you’re going to get in trouble. Rather than how can I assist you in becoming your best self? How can I assist you in your workload so that you get to do the work that lights you up as well as the work that is not so fun for you. Yeah. And that’s something that I really try and lead with when, when I’m working with different teams. So. Yeah. And I think, like, another thing I found really important is just bringing in everybody. You know, like, in a lot of times in product organizations, we look at engineers and we look at product managers and that’s the people we just talked to. But also, like, making sure you loop in customer service, making sure you loop in account managers, get their ideas in because they have great ideas. Yeah. And they’re like, they would provide a completely different perspective to what the tech teams and the product teams would yeah. Also sales teams. Yeah. They are the definition of work. Smarter, not harder. So any. Any tips that you can pick up from a sales team is usually a good idea. And is there any mentors or business leaders that you try to stay up to date with or keep in contact with, even? Yeah. So when I was working at Unbounce, where I worked for five years, my manager, also the director of UX there, her name is Alicia. I consider her one of my mentors. She was amazing. She taught me everything I needed to know, especially about things like research, things that not all designers are in. She taught me how to be more analytical and less, like, less getting caught up in my emotional viewpoint, how to, like, do operational excellence across teams. She is such a good leader. She also built this, like, entire team up from the ground. Yeah. That team was amazing. We were like, the dream team. I think there was, like, seven of us in the end. I know there’s always a place where you look back on super fondly and, like, that was. That was good. We did good stuff. Yeah. I feel like everybody needs a really good mentor, someone that you can go to. You can be like, hey, this is happening at work, and if you don’t have one, again, you can use things like LinkedIn. You can go to networking, I think. I love being a mentor. I like, you know, helping people, because, again, everybody’s been there, and you want to get better and better at your craft. And also, there are types of designers. If you’re the kind of designer where you. You’re really interested in more of the. The Ui piece and the excellence in there, there are people at all companies that are really into that, and they can teach you that craft. So there’s lots of different types of product designers, I guess. Yeah. And for someone who would be, like, potentially looking for a mentor or a mentee? Mentee. Both, I think you could say, if you were to be approached, what would be, like, the best way to do that, do you think? Reach out to me on LinkedIn? Yeah. Like, that’s. That’s the best way. If I gave you my email, I would probably not. I just have so much stuff going on in there, so, yeah, LinkedIn is great. I’ve had, like, several young designers. I’m happy to set up, like, a Zoom call, talk about how to get into the industry. If you want me to look at your portfolio, if you want me to look at your case studies, when you’re a product designer, your case studies in your portfolio obviously look very different to when you’re a graphic designer or another kind of designer. So, yeah, I’m here for it. I think for me as well, I love trying to help people bridge the gap between the graphic design side of things and the product. And there’s lots of different tools, like, even just on YouTube, there’s so many, actually. Yes. Just like so many different things that you can, that you can look up. Most of it’s very. Yep. I know a lot of really great designers who, when I’m speaking to them, I even just ask them, like, I love how you’ve set up this specific case study in your portfolio. Do you mind if I send it through to other junior designers if they’re wondering how to set it up? And nine times out of ten, they’re like, heck, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah, yeah. I’m always like, do you want to look what a senior portfolio looks like? I’ll send it to you. Because you don’t realize, like, for designers, you’re not looking at other people’s portfolios. A lot of the time, you don’t really know what the going, like, what the going thing is. So me as a recruiter, I pretty across that. So I’m always happy to help out with that as well. Yeah. And there’s always, like, even on, you know, medium places like that where there’s articles, there’s a lot of designers on there, like, hey, this is how you can set up your case study. These are the things, the framework to set up for a case study. Or if you want to be more of a design systems person, this is another framework you can use. There’s so much stuff on the Internet you can look at. There’s so many different ways you can do it. Also, I will say you don’t need a really flashy website. Oh, no. I feel like it used to be the way where you needed to have, like cascading, parallax scroll things going. You don’t need that. Just like, make sure it makes sense. You know, the best portfolios I’ve seen recently are super simple. Just built in notion. Yeah, just in there. Yeah. All of the building blocks is there. You just have to plug your own stuff in. Yep. It’s so much easier to read and to navigate. It’s sorted for you, especially for junior burgers who haven’t really, like, got there. Please use that. I use squarespace. Like, honestly, I used a template wix. Yeah, it’s fine. Honestly. When we’re hiring, we’re looking at your website for like maybe ten minutes and we’re going, yes or no? Yeah. So if you’re doing weird little hidden things and strange drop downs, like simple is best. Yeah. Especially for product design. Like, that’s what we’re looking for. Another bit of advice that I love to give to people is if you love someone’s work or if you’re really interested in a company, go and find who, you know, their head of design is, or one of their, like, lead product designers, or, you know, someone kind of fairly up in the ranks and see if, like, they’ve put out any articles or if they’ve got any content that they’ve generated or pushed out. It would give you a really great insight into what they look for as a designer as well. If they were hiring. Little hidden gem of information sometimes. Yeah. Some of them also talk about the hiring process, for example, I know for canva, they have a very specific hiring process. So I know that they. I think they publish also a framework in how they like to. Those are always great because you can see from beginning to end, like what they expect. Yeah. And what can expect as a candidate as well. Exactly. Because some people have design challenges, some people don’t have design challenges. They’re just design challenges. I know. I’m not just saying I’m not a massive fan of them. Me either, but, yeah, some of them do. Yes. Yeah. And some of them are pretty hectic as well. Some of them are like a whole weekend. Lucky. Last question. My favourite, my favourite one. If you were to give your younger self some design advice or career advice, what would that be? Be patient with yourself, because it is not going to be what you expect. I think this is like advice for life. You can have the best ideas. You can have the best plan for yourself. I say this because I am a planner. It’ll probably not go exactly to plan. So you’re going to have to be willing to pivot and change and lean upon other people for their expertise. And sometimes, honestly, especially if you move industries or you, you’re moving jobs, you’re gonna have to kind of start at the bottom again and go back up. And that’s okay. You’re gonna get back up to where you were, but it’s okay to have the setback. So, patience, very important. Be nice to people. Don’t burn bridges. Hell no. I don’t think I’ve done that yet. No, that’s great. And I think that’s really great advice. Especially when everyone is so used to having instantaneous knowledge. Yes. Yeah. Just being comfortable with, with learning something new and learning a new team again, I think is really, really great advice. And, yeah, don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick. We won’t want to hire you if you’re a dick, and we’ll remember if you’re a dick. Thank you so much, Rebecca. I’ve learnt a lot and, yeah, lots of light bulb moments for me to kind of ponder over the next week, so thank you for that. I’m glad it was helpful. Full thank you for having me.